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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Earlier today a New Zealand organization that represents Jews, Christians, and Muslim leaders came out with the following media release calling for peace:

MEDIA RELEASE

NZ Jews, Christians, and Muslims United in Call for Peace
Wellington, 23 July 2014

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders in Wellington issued a joint
statement today regarding the current conflict in Gaza and Israel:

“We call upon all of the parties involved in the current conflict in
Gaza and Israel to cease hostilities, and sit down at the negotiating
table and do the hard work necessary to obtain a just and lasting peace.
We urge all New Zealand Jews, Christians, and Muslims to pray for peace.”

Dave Moskovitz, Jewish Co-Chair, Wellington Council of Christians and Jews
Jenny Chalmers, Christian Co-Chair, Wellington Council of Christians and
Jews
Sultan Eusoff, CEO, Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand

On the surface, this media release sounds like a wonderful thing, what could be better than Jews, Christians, and Muslims calling for peace.

The first problem is that it is totally meaningless. It does not suggest any realistic solutions to the problem, Hamas have made it clear that they have no desire to sit and negotiate over a "just and lasting peace", and even if they did - there would be no reason for Israel to trust or believe them as Hamas has stated repeatedly that they intend to keep fighting until every Jew is Dead.

But besides being a meaningless statement, there is a bigger problem, a council of religious representatives organizations, who should be moral examples for their adherents, seem unable or unwilling to recognize evil when it is staring them in the face.

Hamas is an evil organization. It is founded on hatred, preaches hatred, rejoices when children are killed, and does everything in its power to kill as many people as possible. And proudly states that. This is pure evil.
To make this evil even worse, they do it in their name of their religion.
You don't hav eto take my word for the fact that Hamas is evil. It is clearly visible in statements and videos released by Hamas and their supporters, and is stated explicitly in the Hamas charter.

When religious leaders, such as the council of Christians, Muslims, and Jews are confronted with evil in the name of religion, they should be the first ones to stand up and say that this evil is a perversion of their religious teachings and they totally condemn it.

When Jews do horrible things, such as the savages that murdered an Arab teenager 2 weeks ago, the entire Jewish world, right wing, left wing, religious, and secular expressed revulsion. They made it clear that these individuals in no way represented Judaism, or Jewish teaching, and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The Israeli authorities quickly apprehended them, and they will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Now we have an organization that is firing rockets from schools, hospitals, and heavily populated civilian buildings. The stated purpose of these rocket attacks is to kill as many people as possible, and the celebrate when anyone is killed. And they claim that this is what their religion teaches.

I would have expected the Muslim representatives in the council of Christians, Muslims, and Jews to be the first to stand up and say - this is not Islam! Islam is a religion of Peace that totally rejects killing innocent people.

If they are unable to stand up and say that, if they are unable to tell the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, then general statements about how we should all pray for peace are not only meaningless, they show a moral vacuum.

And before anyone starts leaving comments about how the Israelis have killed civilians, gunned down children playing, kill children for pleasure then use their blood for Matza, crucified Jesus, and are plotting to take over the world, and are responsible for Global warming, please show me an example of when Israel deliberately killed innocent civilians, or rejoiced at the death of civilians. If you can find me such an example, from and Israeli source, I will be the first to condemn it, as should all Jews, including the Jewish representatives on the interfaith body.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

precisely - it's a hard and dirty business fighting against terrorists who's main tactic is to undermine and take cynical advantage of our moral and legal precepts.

Those in positions of authority -even provincial and largely inconsequential authority- have a responsibility to differentiate between justified and unjustified moral actions, not doing so emboldens the terrorists and is a type of defacto complicity.

I object to the statement due to the impact of what would happen if a ceasefire was called today. Israel will not have the opportunity to destroy the terrorist infrastructure and its citizens will still be at risk. Nobody wanted this war, but the intolerable actions of Hamas forced this war upon us. Now that we have taken the steps necessary to defend ourselves, we must recognise that the job needs to be completed.